Making your own baby food

[Asla]

I've got a little one that is a reasonable eater, but not whole9 compliant at all. I'm hoping to slowly introduce her to (at least more) whole9 compliant stuff. At the moment she has milk&grains porridge and fruitmush during the day and eats a bowl of blended to mush babyfood (olvarit) at night.

I've got a blender. What I need now is some guidance on portions and ratio's and of course some good recipes to start with. She eats pretty much anything we feed her at the moment, as long as it is blended well. (Anything with chuncks or a more solid feel gets judged with throwing up sounds / moves. She doesn't have teeth yet and can't chew on anything for real. She likes boiled carrots and broccoli though, but views them more as a toy than as something that should nourish her)

[missmary]

first some questions: how old? Is she breastfeeding at all? or formula?

[Asla]

She just turned one, but was premature, so closer to 10 months. No breast feeding, only formula. Had trouble learning to eat after being fed through a tube for some months, so that's why she still eats everything mushed.

[lbosmer]

This is what we did with my now 2 year old. When he was 1 we had switched him to full fat organic milk. He probably had 8oz milk 3 times a day then juice in between. He was also having 3 meals a day and a snack here and there. In a crock pot (this worked best for me since I work) I would put some chicken, broth, carrots, and what ever other veggies I think he might like into the pot with a little salt (veggies I have used: sweet potatoes, carrots, peas, squash, zucchini). Let it cook all day and then blend it at night. At first I would blend it really smooth and gradually try making it more chunky as he got older. He would eat that for lunch and dinner. For breakfast he would eat scrambled eggs (your little one may have an issue with the texture at first but it never hurts to try and introduce them to new things), applesauce, smashed banana, smashed avocado (not all at once of course! but those were our normal menu items) He also LOVES smoothies. Banana, honey, cocoa, coconut milk is one of his favorites...He calls it his "brown milk drink"

I have to say the crock pot is the way to go. You can just put everything in there, forget it for a few hours and when you come back you have your meals ready. I would puree and then portion out into tupperware and refrigerate or freeze.

Hope this may help you. I came to find it was also really easy to sneak in good veggies this way as well. When everything is blended up he has no idea what it is, just that it's good.

He has since started preschool and has been "ruined". I wish everybody cared about whole foods as much as we do!

[Asla]

It seems I need to buy a crock pot :-) (I was already hoping for an excuse to get myself some new kitchen tools and this is a Good one, yay!)

And I never thought of scrambled eggs for her! I didn't eat eggs as a kid, so maybe that's why it never passed my mind, but it's soft enough to 'chew' and we can introduce it as something to play with, like we did with the boiled carrots. A small bit of boiled egg might just be possible too, I'll have to ask our pre-speech therapist about those. (Yes, we do have professional help in learning mini-me to eat, but the therapist is schooled in traditional food-pyramid style, so now we are working towards eating bread. She is open for my input though).

The whole 'but what will she eat when I'm not there' does concern me though. She already visits daycare and there they don't do Paleo. It's not allowed to take along home-made food, due to safety regulations. So for now it is near impossible not to let her have bread and ricewafles and porridge during the day. If we can manage to give her good food in the morning and at dinnertime, that's a plus, right?

[missmary]

I always hesitate to say too much on this kind of topic, because I don't have my own kids, but I do have a couple comments: once they are done with breastmilk/formula, I don't think kids need milk any more than adults do (which is to say not at all). juice ditto. On eggs, most advise yolks only until after a certain development stage (some say 1year, some 16 months), so you might want to scramble (or soft cook) yolks only for a bit longer. Now is a great time to get her used to a wide variety of vegetable flavors--most kids I've observed are really open to lots of foods this young, but it can be a totally different story at 3 years old. Also, the most important thing, long-term for getting them comfortable with these foods is to see you eating and enjoying them regularly.

good luck and have fun. this is a really great age.

finally, your baby is young enough that you might want to check out the Weston A Price foundation guidelines for baby food. Again, I'm not a mom, so no expert but I know some people find the info from there really usefull.

[Kirsteen]

I found an interesting article here on baby led weaning. I don't always agree with everything Mercola says but I really wish I'd read this when my kids were young

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/03/06/baby-led-weaning.aspx?e_cid=20130306_DNL_art_2&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_content=art2&utm_campaign=20130306

[lbosmer]

I wouldn't beat yourself up over having to let her eat "daycare" food during the day. In a perfect world everyone would eat the way we do and all would be merry. However, I know working moms have to send their little one's SOMEWHERE and sometimes this means them having a diet that we don't find ideal. Heck, it's hard to get them to eat like that even when they don't go to daycare...there is something about gold"pish" and "brown cookies" that my kid just won't give up. The only way to get them to NOT like them/want them is to NEVER give them to them and that's just not possible for me. We have friends, play dates and birthday parties and he sees what other kids are eating and he wants some. Then as they get older, lunch room woes (your mom sent you THAT to eat! gah what was she thinking!) The only thing you can do is try your best to get them to eat as best you can when they are with you and then the rest of the time you have to let it go. They will learn from you as they get older.

[Asla]

Well, kids are genetically wired to have a sweet tooth, just as we grown-ups do, and they don't always have the wisdom to choose healthily..

But well, I guess I shouldn't freak out about it. Maybe they will not be as healthy as they could be, but they will hopefully be more healthy than other kids.

Haha, see me talking plural there? I only have one daughter, but I guess there is a lingering wish for a second ;-)

@Baby-led weaning: Ah, we know this as the Rapley-method. My nephew is learning to eat this way, goign very well. To badly our little girl needs a bit more help on training her chewing and such.

[lulucandoit!]

I have three children - two are adults now - and made babyfood for all of them. They each weaned at different ages. I cooked veggies - anything at all really, and whirred it in my blender/food processer. I was a nanny in France and that is exactly how the mother there did it as well. I would make mixes - leeks and carrots, beets and beet greens, sweet potato and cabbage, collards and onions. I focused on veggies first, just like a W30. I was eating grain then, so the early ones were rice and oatmeal. After they were able to handle veggies, I added cooked meat. As they got older, I gave them bits of whatever the adults were eating.

The reward? They are omnivores who eat a wide variety of food. About 4 years ago, we were travelling and where ever we went, family and friends would comment on how un-picky they were - my older son loves to try odd or exotic food, my daughter would come home from parties and make herself a salad. My youngest will eat anything but organ meat.

It's interesting thinking about it now. At the time, I wanted them to have the most nutritious food possible. I just didn't treat myself quite the same way. Now I am treating myself the way I would treat a child that I love. Cool beans.

[Kim Christensen]

I would be wary of starting grains that early. I have six kids I don't ever super purée foods for my babies nor do I buy baby food. I smash it with a fork pretty well but don't make sure it is super smooth as I want my babies to handle texture from the get go. I do egg yolks at that age but pretty much start giving them whatever veggies, fruit, etc. we eat. I also add grassfed butter or ghee, virgin coconut oil, animal fats, etc. to their veggies. I star chewing meat and giving it to them at that age (yes some might gross out by that). I continue to breast feed at that age as well. But especially if you are not doing breast milk or raw milk, then I would surely be adding good fats in the food.

[Robin Strathdee]

I love the idea of not-pureed baby food. My girls absolutely would not tolerate anything pureed. So, they got softer versions of whole foods Neither one had any teeth before 13 months old, but they both ate bell peppers, tomatoes, chicken, etc with no trouble.

Obviously, for the OP this is less of an option But for the rest...

[Beets]

Yes! Look up Baby Led Weaning. I started purees with my son and then discovered the whole BLW idea. So much easier! I used it exclusively with my daughter and she is a great little eater. True, she's not yet two but she doesn't seem to have any texture issues like my son does. My daughter also loved coconut oil.

http://wholesomebaby...tm#.UVWpEaugleU

The throwing up noises are not necessarily bad. They need to work out the gag reflex. It's scary, yes. I took a First Aid class (which all moms should take anyway). But then there is, I am convinced, less of a choking danger as they progress to more difficult foods. I am guessing the day care people will freak out about this, but you can do it at home. If your child was being fed via a tube, maybe eating not pureed foods will be more appealing?

In terms of some being better than none: always!

My friend was talking about sunscreens and how the safe, groovy ones make the kids' skin white and her husband hates it, her kid hates the smell, blah blah blah. So she started alternating the groovy sunscreen with the mass market ones. And she was feeling guilty but then she realized that her son is getting half the chemicals that kids who use only the mass market sunscreens are getting. I think of this principle all the time.